Belgium’s problem: Too many jobs (for politicians)

When a scandal over politicians' side jobs forced one of Belgium's major parties from power, it shocked the country's political establishment. But the revelations came as no surprise to Christophe Van Gheluwe, a 41-year-old IT expert from Brussels.

The long-mighty Socialist Party (PS) lost the support of its junior partner in two regional governments, and the administration responsible for the Francophone community, after an outcry over politicians' numerous extra jobs in public bodies and companies, some of them highly paid.

The scandal also cost the Socialist mayor of Brussels his job after it was revealed he had a dozen other roles. Thanks to one of his extra posts, he even got paid to attend board meetings of Samusocial, an organization that helps the homeless.

Politicians' multiple jobs are a feature of Belgium's complex administrative system, with its many layers of government, which are also deeply involved in running many public organizations and companies. In a country of only 11 million people, that means politicians often have their fingers in many different pies.

Since 2004, all politicians' jobs have had to be made public under Belgian law. But Van Gheluwe, an IT engineer from Brussels, noticed that it was hard to find this information. So he started a website, Cumuleo, that records all the roles and jobs of Belgian politicians.

The side-job culture in Belgium has its origin in the tangled web of administrations meant to ensure all the country’s different regions and linguistic communities are adequately represented.

"It's typical of Belgium. Information about mandates has to be publicly available. We have to be transparent, but there is no real transparency. There seems to be a will not to disclose information,” he said.

'Berlusconi of Liège'

Although Van Gheluwe started the website back in 2009, the issue of side jobs really started to generate political heat in Belgium only last December. That's when a media outlet revealed that Publifin, a public utility company in Wallonia, had paid a total of €2 million to 24 politicians from various parties since 2013 to sit on advisory boards that turned out to be fake.

The most powerful man in the company was its CEO, Stéphane Moreau, mayor of the small Walloon town of Ans. Described by some media outlets as "the Berlusconi of Liège," Moreau earned almost €1 million from a total of 21 jobs in 2015. He quit the Socialist Party in April as a result of the scandal.

The revelations prompted the centrist cdH party in June to end its role as a junior partner with the PS in Wallonia, Brussels and the French-speaking community. It was a spectacular fall for the PS, particularly in Wallonia, where it has been part of every government for the past three decades.

In Brussels, Mayor Yvan Mayeur was also forced out in the same month after he was unable to justify taking payments to attend board meetings of Samusocial, an organization that provides shelter for homeless people.

The Samusocial role was just one of 13 jobs Mayeur held. He was paid for six of them — pocketing €56,546 last year, for example, for his advisory role at water distribution company Vivaqua, as well as a €714 attendance fee per board meeting. Those payments all came on top of his mayoral salary of €130,000 per year.

Mayeur was replaced by Philippe Close, another Socialist Party member. Close himself failed to declare 9 of his 30 mandates when he worked as an alderman in the city council. His other jobs include sitting on the board of directors of insurance company Ethias, health insurance agency CSD, and local housing agency CSAD.

Van Gheluwe's Cumuleo website played a role in the case by listing those omissions.

In Francophone Belgium, the PS tops Cumuleo's list of mandates per politician, followed by the liberal Reformist Movement (MR), with some politicians holding as many as 50 or 60 side jobs, Van Gheluwe said. On the Flemish side, the center-left Socialistische Partij Anders (sp.a) records the most mandates. The overall average is between six and seven jobs per politician.

But according to Van Gheluwe, it's not always the number of roles that's the problem.

"It can also be the conflict of interest between two jobs," he said, citing the case of Siegfried Bracke, the Flemish nationalist president of the federal parliament, who was also working as an adviser to cable television provider Telenet.

Bracke, a former journalist who had a total of 20 mandates in 2016, quit the Telenet job as a result of political pressure in February. He said he did not get paid for his advisory role and declared his work was "a private matter."

Tangled web

The side-job culture in Belgium has its origin in the tangled web of administrations meant to ensure all the country's different regions and linguistic communities are adequately represented.

The federal and regional governments (Belgium has six)control many public institutions. In addition, Belgium's low privatization rate gives politicians a lot of power in the corporate world, said Pieter Cleppe, head of the Brussels office of liberal think tank Open Europe.

"There are many parallel structures and administrations needing political coordination and that therefore increases the power of political parties, which have been ruling the country for decades. This facilitates having dozens of mandates or, even worse, abuse of power," Cleppe said.

Many political parties have arrangements in place where "veteran politicians are rewarded with side jobs and sometimes receive too much money for the work they do,” he said.

IT expert Van Gheluwe spends about 30 hours a week transferring and checking data from the Court of Audit, the governmental institution that publishes a yearly overview of politicians' mandates.

He is now expanding Cumuleo with more information about payments. Politicians' declarations often do not specify how much they are getting paid, since this is not mandatory under Belgian law. So Van Gheluwe keeps himself busy by tracking down these figures in his spare time, searching companies' and politicians' websites and contacting their offices. To get full access to the database, he asks visitors for a contribution of €1 per month.

Modest change

Both Van Gheluwe and Cleppe believe the recent furor will bring about some change in Belgium’s political culture.

The PS, in particular, has paid a heavy price for the side-jobs scandal — not just in losing power but also in a dramatic fall in its poll ratings.

If elections were held today, the communist Workers' Party of Belgium (PTB) would emerge as the largest party in Wallonia, with some 25 percent of the vote, up from just 5 percent in the 2014 election. The PS would fall back to 16 percent — half of the share of the vote it won in the last election.

The PS took a modest step at a July 2 party congress toward addressing the issue by backing plans to restrict the number of roles its MPs can hold — even if the measure was passed only narrowly, with 52 percent of the votes. MPs will now only be allowed a side job as a mayor or alderman of a city of up to 50,000 inhabitants, and they will not be paid for the second role. PS members also agreed to cap salaries of roles at organizations funded with public money.

“The current situation will only change if the government gets into severe financial problems" -- Pieter Cleppe

PS leader Elio Di Rupo declared that all the party's elected representatives now knew that the days of piling up public salaries had come to an end.

But Cleppe said the party would continue to have substantial clout in Wallonia.

“The PS has appointed key people in administrations for decades. This network, with top officials in influential positions, will continue to exist for a long time,” he said.

And he added fundamental change would only come about through necessity.

"Scandals happen more easily because governments across Belgium have enormous financial resources. And because they have the money, they will spend it," he said.

“The current situation will only change if the government gets into severe financial problems, maybe when interest rates go up, forcing it to privatize its companies and to address mismanagement. Only then there is scope to really clean up their administrations," Cleppe said.